Navigating Materials Open to Multiple Readings: Pearltrees as a model of inclusive practice

Abstract

The article reviews some significant parameters in relation to possible interventions for facilitating the inclusion of the different literacy-fostering cultures of the 21st century, ranging from the traditional reader, trained in the practices of a written culture, to the hyperconnected digital reader. In this context, there is a need to reexamine the key role of the Internet as an increasingly decisive environment, dérive as a metaphor for contemporary reading, and the notion of extimacy as a new way of ‘showing oneself’ in a community and constructing identities. All of this is exemplified by the Pearltrees tool, underlining its collaborative and heuristic nature, and proposing practices that counter the commodification of culture, stereotypes and confusion, replacing these with inclusive practices that favour a broad-ranging integral curriculum of readings.